Let’s Not Talk About ISIS or Ebola for Today

At the risk of sounding a bit like a Vitamin C song about graduating high school seniors, the editorial board would like to address Homecoming Week. Though we are only here on campus for a few precious years, Youngstown State University will surely leave a lasting impact on our lives. So, will we want to come back to visit during Homecoming Week when we are alumni? Will we go back to U-Pie and have a few drinks with some old buddies? Will we exchange hugs and smiles with a favorite professor?

Nah.

But, wait — it’s not because we’re insensitive jerks. We won’t go back to YSU for homecoming because we won’t have any need to go back.

Think about it. There’s already an incredibly realistic interactive campus map on the school website. We encourage you to check it out — without ever stepping foot on campus, the map’s dazzling graphics will whisk you away to Lincoln Avenue when you’re actually sitting on your family room couch, stuffing your face with potato chips. Who knows, maybe in the future you won’t even have to be at YSU to read The Jambar. Imagine a world where this very editorial can be read on the display of some kind of futuristic device a thousand miles away from Youngstown.

And who needs face-to-face interactions at a homecoming parade when we already have Facebook and Twitter? Hell, social media is already far superior to real-life interactions. Where else other than on the Internet can you so freely speak your mind? What homecoming parade has ever been as enlightening as our virtual friends’ comments on a Buzzfeed article about the best methods to cook grilled cheese sandwiches?

What’s more, even if we were to run into some old friends from college 20 years from now, odds are we won’t recognize them. They will have not only put on considerable weight, but also have turned into cyborgs, having long ago purchased Google Glass version 19.0.2 — an exoskeleton that will act as a computer, a phone and a NSA monitoring/tracking device — that will allow them to shed the fleshy confines of their pointless human skin.

Better yet, we may have all ascended to a higher state of consciousness — becoming gods in our own right. At that point, “homecoming” and “friendship” will become idyllic concepts we pass on, with celestial authority, to our primitive followers. Wouldn’t that just be the bees’ knees?

We know, our humor is positively extraordinary, but we do have a point, buried beneath layers of thinly veiled sarcasm. The truth is that this university is special to us, regardless of how much we may be prone to mock. It is comfortable; it is safe; it is home. We, as people, sometimes have a problem confronting the future. So, with all this in mind, we say to you: Homecoming sure is cool. Go Penguins! Oh who the hell are we kidding? We really just wanted to talk about cyborgs and becoming omnipotent. Did you really think we were going anywhere with this utter nonsense?

Not that any of this matters because by the time homecoming rolls around next year, we will all have already been killed by ISIS extremists and their bullets dipped in Ebola.